Left Handed

3

I have three interesting tidbits to tell you.

One: I woke up in the hospital yesterday.

Two: My left arm (the very one attached to my dominant hand) is gone from just above the elbow.

Three: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

We have a question from the audience, ladies and gentlemen.

"Uhm, Ms Ortega, how are you writing this?"

The answers is; very slowly. Do you know how people born prior to, let's be generous here, the 1980s type with their phone in one hand and operating the keyboard with the index finger of their other hand? I do that but I DON'T HAVE another hand. I pop the phone on my pillow and type like that. It's not been easy.

I'm at the Hospital General Mateu Orfila. Great place, really. My room is small but I'm alone here. There's a room down the hall with an elderly man hacking and coughing all night and with him in the same room is a fifty-something year old German tourist recovering from a heart attack.

One of the nurses is called Maria... oh alright! I feel like I'm loosing you. This is how I got here from what I can remember:

It was the day of the date with Cristina. After school we all piled into Manu's car and by "we all" I mean eight people and by "Manu's car" I mean a four-and-a-half seater. I squeezed in the back left corner and hung my arm out the window.

Alex sat beside me and said, "Don't take so much space you fat cow," whereupon the entire car sang a really cute song about a cow that lived a wonderful life and ended up on the plate of a French king who choked on a bit of gristle.

I just stared out the window, my gave a mask of composure while terror broiled inside me. I'm not good with crowds. Give me one person at a time and I can be relatively good at making friends or at least not making enemies. In a crowd I feel awkward and judged.

When I was twelve years old my dad enrolled me in a soccer team. I played one training match where the ball hit me in the face and I heard a few of the other girls snicker. That was the last time I went there.

At one point Alex must have noticed because he leaned in to me and said, "I'm sorry, Tracy, I didn't think you would get upset."

The way he said my name with his Spanish accent, "Trathy" was really quite cute but I was upset already so I snapped.

"It's Tracy, not Trathy. Learn how to speak," I said. It hurt him, I saw. He turned away from me and started to talk to the guy next to him.

Good. He's weird. I don't want the first guy I date in Menorca to be strange and then be known as an easy girl.

On the beach we build a small fire and sat around it. Someone, I think Pedro was his name, produced a bottle of vodka which got passed around.

I'm not much of a drinker. After the second turn, I abstained much to the disappointment of everyone. But we laughed and we had a good time. Cristina started to kiss with Manu and shortly after they detached themselves from the rest of the group.

This one girl, Sarah, put her hands on my thigh and whispered sweet things into my ear. I went with her mainly to spite Alex who looked on disappointed. We went tin swim and Sarah tried to kiss me but I stopped her.

At about 9 pm Cristina came to me and said that I was chosen to drive us back home. I panicked. Have I mentioned that I never drove a car?

"Cristina, I have never drive  a car," I said.

"Don't worry, dear. I will coach you through it."

After a lot of jumpstarts, shouting and laughing, I finally got us underway.

I honestly don't remember much of what happened on the drive home. Everyone was drunk and I was at least a little tipsy. There was banter. At one point Cristina, who sat next to me, shoved me. I lost control of the the car. It swerved wildly and I desperately pulled the wheel this way and that to put us back on the road but to no avail. I drove us over the verge and up an incline where the car flipped. I had a searing pain in my arm, screams, pain in the head. Nothing.

The doctor told me that I must have had my arm out the window because it was completely crushed. Which brings us to the time I woke up in the hospital with a stump for an arm. I will tell you tomorrow all the little details of my current state.

Today I am exhausted. I'm on more painkillers than is used on pigs in a slaughterhouse. Not that I'm complaining. After all, my aunt is hovering over my bed and I feel I'm going to need all the sedatives I can get.